Life Technologies Corporation And Southern African Treatment and Resistance Network Collaborate To Increase Access To HIV Testing In Africa

Life Technologies Corporation announced a collaboration with the Southern African Treatment and Resistance Network (SATuRN) on sequencing-based diagnostics for HIV-infected individuals in Africa.

Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are becoming increasingly available in the developing world, due to facilitation by both governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as reductions in price and international trade restrictions by pharmaceutical companies.

Resistance to these drugs develops in many HIV-infected individuals, however, and resistance is therefore coming to the forefront of the global health agenda. Resistance can be monitored by genetic sequencing of two viral genes, but current costs have made routine use prohibitive in most African countries.

Life Technologies has developed together with SATuRN a simple-to-answer solution for ARV resistance testing, which is being made available to African partners at an economic cost per test. The test can be run on Life's Applied Biosystems line of Sanger sequencing instruments, which are broadly installed in African hospitals and HIV-testing centers. Additional collaborators on the test development include the Stanford HIV Drug Resistance Database.

Life Technologies has developed together with SATuRN a simple-to-answer solution for ARV resistance testing, which is being made available to African partners at an economic cost per test. The test can be run on Life's Applied Biosystems line of Sanger sequencing instruments, which are broadly installed in African hospitals and HIV-testing centers. Additional collaborators on the test development include the Stanford HIV Drug Resistance Database.